Analysis of female masculinity during wartime in the night watch from the perspective of gender performativity

Abstract

The novel The Night Watch (2006) by Sarah Waters, a contemporary British novelist, tells the story of four women whose fortunes were intertwined before and after World War II. By Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, this paper analyzes the wartime female images in the novel. Women’ s wartime drag subverts the binary opposition of people’s presupposed notion about sex and women’ s occupation of men’ job that breaks the fictitious perception of gender opposition; the lesbian love affairs challenge the compulsory heterosexuality. Through the interpretations of the feminist thoughts conveyed by Waters in The Night Watch and Butler’s theory of gender performativity, it can be discovered that the nature of gender identity is actually fictional and can be constructed, reflecting the appeal for gender equality.